Thursday, February 05, 2004

At the 90-nm node, gate lengths are 50 nm, which is "clearly
nanotechnology by any definition," said George Bourianoff, Intel
Corp.'s senior program manager for the strategic research group at
Intel.

Bourianoff said there's a "push-pull relationship"
between
the silicon industry and nanotechnology. He said carbon nanotubes and
nanowires may extend CMOS scaling down to the 1 to 3 nm range. At the
same time, he noted, the silicon manufacturing infrastructure is an
ideal platform for enabling nanotechnology.

A couple of days ago, I met Zyvex President Tom
Cellucci at an Ann Arbor
restaurant (Take a note, young entrepreneur wannabes: this
high-powered nano honcho enjoys Greek salad and hummus, while this
low-powered journalist just sat and chain-drank coffee), and we
discussed a range of issues. Among them were the short-term
commercialization steps the company is taking along the way to its goal
of building a molecular assembler. (Yes, you read that correctly. A
real company still has, as its stated goal anyway, the creation of the "impossible.")

Cellucci was brought
on board in late 2002 to, essentially, force the company to "get
real" and start selling products after the initial hype surrounding
Zyvex (one of the first nanotech companies to launch) had died down. I
had assumed, then, that Cellucci would sluff off the "molecular
assember" question, clear his throat and attempt to change the
subject. So, of course, I asked the question. His answer surprised me.

Me:
"Would you say that Zyvex has pretty much turned around almost 180 from
the goal of a molecular assembler, or is there still part of the
corporate culture that's working toward that goal?

Cellucci: Oh, no. No, we still are holding true to
the long-term vision
of developing a molecular assembler. What we've done, though, is we've
gotten more detailed in what that technology development pathway needs
to be, what capabilities we need to build and at the same time we
looked at unsatisfied need in the marketplace.

For example, we needed
to develop a nanomanipulation capability. We needed to move things at
the nanoscale. Well, we found out that there were a lot of companies,
large companies like GE, Intel, Hewlett Packard, our customers today,
who were doing R&D in nanotech, and very much could use these
tools. That's how we launched the nanomanipulator
line."

Silicon and nanotech, as a colleague of mine would say, are the new
Reese's of the tech world -- the "peanut butter and chocolate" that can
help each other taste so much better.

More on the silicon/small tech
marriage will appear in the March/April issue of Small
Times magazine.